


Five People Teyla Ran Into at the SGC and the Impressions They Made on Her

by Paian



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: 1000-3000 words, 5 Things, Character Study, Character of Color, Community: sg1_five_things, Crossover, F/M, POV Outsider, Rare Pairing, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-29
Updated: 2007-04-29
Packaged: 2017-10-03 04:19:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,308
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Paian/pseuds/Paian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Teyla visits Stargate Command for a day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five People Teyla Ran Into at the SGC and the Impressions They Made on Her

**Author's Note:**

> This is set before Woolsey takes charge of Atlantis, but Paul Davis is a colonel, because he should have been at least a lieutenant colonel by then, regardless of how canon has neglected his promotions.

She liked Colonel Paul Davis very much. He reminded her of herself -- serious, earnest, responsible, capable, with enough experience of the ways that people could demean and betray each other to justify a bitter guardedness he did not project at all. His openness and understated humor were immediately appealing, and the gracious efficiency with which he conducted her through her preliminary tour of the facility, and the way his body moved like a fighter's under the garb of a bureaucratic official. He had been assigned to her by his superiors as a gesture of respect for her status as an emissary of all the humans of her galaxy as well as an operative on their sister facility's frontline team, but as they moved from section to section in the mountain safehold she sensed their diplomatic negotiations taking a subtly personal turn, and she welcomed it.

Master Sergeant Sylvester Siler was a large, ruggedly handsome man with a shy manner and a wealth of knowledge of mechanical things she had no need to understand. As they entered the provinces of his expertise, his tongue untangled and made poetry of plainspokenness. Because it was poetry, and because of the proud shine in his eyes, she listened, and she learned; but she suspected that there were more useful things he could teach her, and when she had borrowed appropriate clothes from an airman her size and sparred with him in their gymnasium for the hour he had agreed to share of his personal time, her suspicion proved correct. His fighting style was fluid and aggressive, acquired more, he told her during breathers, on the rough urban streets of his youth and in the neighborhood boxing ring that he believed had saved him from them than in the training programs of the military he had chosen to join. He had never served his country in combat, but he was an experienced, quite deadly warrior, and her gratitude at the end of their hour was quite genuine. Both the bruises she had acquired and the bruises she had avoided would attest to her enjoyment of the man and the hour they shared, and she would enjoy even more passing on to Ronon what she had learned. Perhaps they would meet one day, Ronon and this Sergeant Siler. They would enjoy each other, she thought, very much.

She fell in love with Doctor Bill Lee within the first ten minutes of their acquaintance. She had not laughed with such pure delight in a very long time. Charming and utterly oblivious, he tried so hard to explain the marvels he was showing her in terms that she could understand. He failed, but his exuberance and his enthusiasm were more than infectious, and though for his sake she feigned true comprehension, she did not have to feign interest or excitement. Then, with a furtive glee he had not exhibited even while demonstrating the most wondrous and highly classified experiments, he introduced her to the World of Warcraft. She left his laboratory pleasantly besotted, thoroughly addicted, and with a gift she could barely wait to bring back to John Sheppard, in a plastic jewelcase in her hands.

She ran into Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman quite literally and rather spectacularly, as she was moving far too quickly around a turn in the half-familiar corridors, late for her next meeting and having claimed not to need further escorting until Colonel Davis was made available again later in the day. Sergeant Harriman had been moving slowly but with vision impaired by the large stack of paperwork he was attempting to move single-handedly and in one trip from some records area to General Landry's office. As she insisted on helping him gather the scattered folders and binders and carrying half of them to the destination for him, he picked up the nearest wall phone and adroitly rescheduled the meeting she was late for -- having, apparently, the SGC's entire scheduling grid available as a virtual construct in his mind. She ended up spending the rest of the hour with him in his office, watching him juggle phones and miniature crises and the aid required by General Landry, all the while never losing the thread of his conversation with her. She found him a slyly humorous, self-deprecating but otherwise honest man, good-hearted and deeply, quietly dedicated. She was glad for the serendipitous collision that had allowed her to get to know him, and after he dropped her off at her _next_ next meeting, she watched him go with the feeling that she'd made an unexpected friend.

She was far less happy to run into Richard Woolsey. Her day at Stargate Command was almost complete, and when he came upon her in the briefing room, alone after the conclusion of her last, longest meeting, he suggested that they share a beverage in the facility's commissary, and the suggestion was too much like insistence for her to gracefully decline.

In fact, what he said was "They didn't give you lunch? C'mon, I'll buy you a drink -- you can't say you've taken the pulse of a place if you haven't been to the mess hall." In fact she rarely ate a midday meal and had opted to spend that allotted time with Sergeant Siler, and in fact she _had_ been taking the pulse of the place: spending her last few unescorted minutes in solitary contemplation of the activity in the embarkation room, perceiving differences in its rhythms and ambience, trying to define for herself what they were, beyond the concrete walls and the strongly military atmosphere that set it most obviously apart from the gate area in Atlantis. And her experience of Richard Woolsey had not been, for the most part, positive. He was a man who had had more than enough experience of jeopardy in the field to be ... a better man than he was, a better leader among his people. She had made every effort to see the strength in him and had glimpsed only weakness and bluster beneath a thin veneer of necessary bravery. Tap him again, she feared, and he would crack. She did not think such a man should hold the place this man held in the Terran hierarchy.

But as they sat down with coffee and apple pie in the surprising off-hours bustle of the commissary, he said, "I came to admire you a great deal, Ms. Emmagan, during my time in Atlantis. I'd like you to like me, and I know you don't, and I know that for you it isn't a matter of like or dislike; the problem is that I worry you. I just want to take this opportunity to say that I'm aware of that, and I'll make every effort to be the man you didn't find me to be. It's a man I'd like to be, and I will ... continue to strive. That's all." He gave her a smile -- a little sad, completely undemanding and even less contrived -- and said, "So what do you think of the mess?"

In return, Teyla gave him a genuine smile of her own, thinking that perhaps he was not so much of an unpleasant inversion of Rodney McKay as she had believed, and said, "I think that if not for you I would have overlooked this place, and I think that I am glad I came here with you."

They had a gratifying and stimulating half-hour of conversation, as she took in the atmosphere of SGC personnel relaxing instead of working, and then Colonel Davis arrived to pick her up for her introduction to the world "topside" -- at her request, he had arranged for her to extend her stay overnight and through the following day, to get a taste of Earth -- and she took her leave of the SGC and embarked on a very gratifying and stimulating night.


End file.
